The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The General Packet Radio System (GPRS) is a new service that provides actual packet radio access for mobile Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and time-division multiple access (TDMA) users. The main benefits of GPRS are that it reserves radio resources only when there is data to send and it reduces reliance on traditional circuit-switched network elements.
The increased functionality of GPRS will decrease the incremental cost to provide data services, an occurrence that will, in turn, increase the penetration of data services between consumer and business users. In addition, GPRS will allow improved quality of data services as measured in terms of reliability, response time, and features supported. The unique applications that will be developed with GPRS will appeal to a broad base of mobile subscribers and allow operators to differentiate their services. These new services will increase capacity requirements on the radio and base-station subsystem resources. One method GPRS uses to alleviate the capacity impacts is sharing the same radio resource among all mobile stations in a cell, providing effective use of the scarce resources. In, addition, new core network elements will be deployed to support the high burstiness of data services more efficiently.
In addition to providing new services for today's mobile user, GPRS is important as a migration step toward third-generation (3G) networks. GPRS will allow network operators to implement an IP-based core architecture for data applications, which will continue to be used and expanded upon for 3G services for integrated voice and data applications. In addition, GPRS will prove a testing and development area for new services and applications, which will also be used in the development of 3G services.
To remain competitive in the market for wireless mobile telecommunications and computing services, mobile telecommunications service providers need to be prepared to rapidly launch various value-added services. Unlike past services, emerging services require authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) capabilities to manage access and usage for services and applications.
For example, to decide whether to offer, authorize or satisfy requests for new services to users who prepay, mobile service providers need to determine, in real time, such data as customer balance and past service usage. Thus, as a specific example, to determine whether to permit a particular user having a prepaid account to access a mobile interactive game service, the service provider must be able to determine, in real time, whether the user's account contains sufficient remaining value to cover the requested service.
In the context of network access, AAA servers based on protocols such as RADIUS and TACACS+ can provide authentication, authorization and accounting services. However, existing AAA servers and related protocols do not provide functions that can support prepaid service offerings, such as account balance determination and account balance reservation.
Mobile service providers also need to perform such AAA functions in coordination with equipment and software that governs network access. For example, in certain mobile networks that use packet-switched data communication protocols, a packet data router is configured as an access controller. When a user contacts the network, the user first reaches the access controller. The access controller authenticates the user by communicating with the AAA server. After authenticating the user, the access controller receives a subscribed service list from the AAA server. The access controller grants access to the network services that are included in the subscribed service list. Routers operating as access controllers also may be termed access servers; however, the term access controller is used in this description to avoid confusion with gateway support nodes, which act as access servers for mobile devices in certain embodiments that are described further below.
An example of an access controller with these capabilities is the 7200 or 7400 with the Service Selection Gateway Cisco IOS feature (“SSG”), from Cisco Systems, Inc., of San Jose, Calif. SSG is a software solution, supported on various hardware platforms, which allows users (subscribers) who use a variety of access technologies such as xDSL, cable, wireless and dial-up to simultaneously access the services provided by different ISPs and corporate L2TP access servers. In one implementation, SSG is a software module in a router, which connects to the subscriber's network, service management network and service providers' network. SSG is responsible for regulating service selection and directing traffic for the subscribers.
In current access controllers, each user is implicitly authorized to use a service by the presence of that service in the subscribed service list provided during user authentication. This approach is inadequate for supporting prepaid service offerings of mobile service providers. In particular, there is a need to perform operations such as checking account balances before granting access to selected services. There is also a need for a way to disable access to a service when the prepaid time or value for that service is exhausted. Thus, there is a need to provide some form of explicit service authorization as part of the user authentication process and dynamic service re-authorization following consumption of a reserved balance.
Users of prepaid mobile services, and the providers of these services, also desire to have other functions available in a mobile handset or terminal. For example, there is a need for service providers to offer real-time billing per service. Users wish to have online display of prepaid balances and online refilling of credit balances. Users and service providers wish to have the ability for users to concurrently access multiple services, and to sequentially access different services without re-authentication. Users and service providers also desire to have support for micro payment transactions.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for an improved way to use existing AAA services to support prepaid service offerings of mobile service providers.
There is a specific need for a way to support real-time billing per service, online balance display and refilling, concurrent and sequential access, and micro payments.